Cloud gaming service Gaikai and Meteor Entertainment announce plans to debut Hawken via Gaikai before the previously announced December 12th release date for Adhesive Games' free-to-play mech combat game. They do not specify exactly when this will happen, but that: "Powered by Gaikaiís high performance open cloud platform, HAWKEN will be available to try instantly before its 12/12/12 launch date on www.playhawken.com and other websites, with no downloads or installs required." Signups to beta test the game are still being conducted on the Hawken Website. "HAWKEN wants to be free and it wants to be everywhere - and with Gaikai, it will be," stated Mark Long, CEO at Meteor Entertainment. "Their tech is the next level. It's mind blowing to see HAWKEN running on a tablet!"

Milhouse, Gaikai is shit. Yes, the idea of it is alright in that it is free and would potentially be a good way to try out a game without installing anything. However, where Gaikai falls apart is in its actual implementation and use. It's shit. My Internet connection has decent speed (10Mbit/s) with no usage caps so on paper it's a good candidate for this service, but in practice it's still shit.

For the brief time when a game actually runs, it looks like shit and the framerate and responsiveness are even worse. And, that's before the game cuts out completely after a minute or two to "recalibrate" the speed before automatically closing out the session because the performance is insufficient.